Today Tasktop 1.6 and Mylyn 3.3 are released, the next evolution of
the popular task management tool for Eclipse. For those who haven't
used Mylyn,
the open source task management offering, it's the perfect way to try
out the task focussed approach. Meanwhile Tasktop gives you extra
certified connectors and integrates with your mail and calendars. To
see the difference, check out the feature comparison matrix on the Tasktop site.

CEO Mik Kersten describes the issues that Tasktop solves in his latest blog entry. Here he describes how the task management layer helps developers to focus on what's really important:

Within this layer, Mylyn provides the task management APIs that
integrate the IDE with the various ALM systems in play. Tasktop and
Mylyn connectors provide the integrations with a team’s tools for
change management, source code configuration management, build and
release management, and test and quality management. Tasktop 1.6
completes the layer by automating the linking and tracking of task
across the very wide variety of commercial and open source ALM tools.

To
summarize, Tasktop have seen that IDE integration isn't something that
vendors have focussed on, and have provided a way to get important
systems like bug tracking into your Eclipse IDE.

What's New

I
just had to chance to try out the latest version of Tasktop this
morning. The first thing that you'll see when you start it up is the
new welcome page. For novice users this will be a nice addition,
providing a good guide on how to use Tasktop properly.

The
new Task Federation feature allows you to link across multiple systems
that have integrated with Tasktop. So now it's possible to link, import
and migrate across your repositories. This could be useful for you as
you convert an email to a user story, and link your bugs to the user
story. Or if you simply use multiple bug tracking systems, you can link
between them now.

On
top of this there's better automated time tracking available, and with
the Time Tracking dashboard, developers and managers will gain better
visibility into progress.

Users of Mylyn will be happy to hear that there is now full support for Eclipse CDT for your C/C++ projects.

I spoke briefly to Mik Kersten about today's announcement:

DZone: If this announcement has just brought Tasktop to someone's
attention, why should they use it?

Mik Kersten: If you’re already an Eclipse Mylyn user, the main reason to
add Tasktop to your Eclipse install is that it will take the productivity boost
that you got from Mylyn to the next level. Whether or not you’re a
Mylyn user, consider Tasktop if you need an integration with a commercial ALM
or collaboration tool, support, or one of the task-focused collaboration features
that it provides, such as the ability to turn email threads into user stories in
your ALM tool. The most notable new features in Tasktop 1.6 are cross-repository
linking and time tracking for the task editor.

DZone: You seem to be helping customers to understand how to use
Tasktop more. Is this a result of feedback you've got from customers? Can we
expect more ease-of-use changes in future?

Mik Kersten: Whereas the focus of Mylyn is to provide a framework, APIs, and reference
implementations for task management, the goal for Tasktop is to provide a streamlined
product experience. We’re now seeing enough large scale and
enterprise adoption that this additional level of refinement is important to help
support our latest crop of new users. We’re staying true to our “less
is more” mantra and keeping the experience lightweight and slick. In
this respect, my favorite new feature in Tasktop 1.6 is the unique getting started
dashboard that we’ve added. In addition to being a learning portal
for all the key Tasktop and Mylyn functionality, we’ve baked the typical learning
path into the experience. This helps ensure that the new user is comfortable
with the Task List before they move on to more advanced functionality, such as configuring
task-focused web browsing. And yes, we do have more ease-of-use efforts
underway. For example, we’re working on a new query wizard in
Tasktop that will automatically set up your Task List according to the people
that you collaborate with. So while the full power of configurability
remains in Mylyn, we will continue to make it easy to adopt best practices with
the additional guidance and automation that Tasktop provides.

DZone: Can you tell us about any future connectors that Tasktop will
provide? If I have an idea for one, where do I go to add a request?

Mik Kersten: Later this fall we’ll see ThoughtWorks Mingle and IBM
Rational ClearCase connectors. Three are more in the works as well.
To stay up-to-date on connectors and vote for additional ones check out http://tasktop.com/connectors

DZone: What is the most popular connector/use of Tasktop that you are
seeing among users?

Mik Kersten: In terms of volume of feedback via requests, it’s still Bugzilla. This
could in part be explained by the fact that Mylyn and Tasktop users can happily
work without needing to use Bugzilla’s Web UI. The may 2009 Eclipse
Community Survey also indicated that Bugzilla was the most popular bug and
issue tracker, and the adoption numbers that we have closely match to that
survey’s results.

The Benefits of a Task Focussed User Interface

Although I had written about
the benefits of Mylyn and the task focussed user interface a while
back, I only got a chance to start using it in my development
organisation recently thanks to a new connector becoming available for
our bug tracking system. Since I've started using it I've noticed
definite improvements in how fast I address a bug.

It works
really simply - as you're working on a bug you mark it as active. From
there, your views are all filtered to show only what you deem to be
important for the context of the bug. As you open a class, it will be
added to the context, but you can always remove it if you think it's
unnecessary.

While another bug comes in, and I want to
investigate, I think mark the new one as the active one. The best part
is, that when I come back to the original bug and mark it active, I see
all the files that I had originally associated. You'll find out a lot
more bout my experiences with Mylyn in a future article. For now, why not check out the excellent Eclipse Live tutorial on using Mylyn.